Some kind of seed pod?
Image: John Henry McNulty
Monday, May 5, 2008
Justice - Stress
This video is kicking up a bit of controversy.
Some say it's social commentary on the violent youth problem in France. Some say it's gratuitous ultra-violence.
What do you take away from it?
A few stray points on food and fuel
What puzzles me is, if food is becoming increasingly expensive and there is a potential conflict over using corn for fuel, shouldn't we stop paying farmers not to grow crops? (see)
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Food for thought
I think that Malthus was way off. For those of you not aware of this, Thomas Malthus was an early-19th century economist who, upon examining the world's first ever comprehensive and compete inventory of the world's vital and economic statistics, concluded that population would always outstrip means of sustenance. This would only be kept in check by war, disease and starvation, and an increasing majority of humanity would have to live out their lives suffering and deprived. Combine this with the emergence of Social Darwinism and you have two policy-driving theories that have been functioning as self-fulfilling prophecies, helping to create all manner of unnecessary and horrible conditions for the majority of humans on this planet. Many things seemingly crazy in this world start to make sense when one views them through this distorted lens.
For an excellent visualization of world poverty see this. Those of you out there making over $30,000 a year should definitely watch this video.
I subscribe to Buckminster Fuller's assertion that, "Technologically we now have four billion billionaires onboard Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune. Unbeknownst to them, their legacy is being held in probate by general ignorance, fear (and) selfishness." (R. Buckminster Fuller - Critical Path, 1981)
There is plenty enough to go around. If we made it an actual rubber-meets-the-road priority, we could realize our good fortune. Every person uplifted from poverty fuels markets, creates wealth and contributes human potential at a time when we need all we can get. It is truly a win-win scenario. If the will is there, there is no reason why we can't succeed as a species.
When over 80% of the world's population is living in poverty, we cannot claim any form of overall success, no matter how great our accomplishments.
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Question: Since our current method of throwing money at problems doesn't seem to be working out so well, how can we actually and effectively deal with poverty, hunger and disease?
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Another question: Should fuel and staple foods be treated as a public utility?
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Feedback is encouraged.
ends
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Sunday Excursions: Sunday Gumbo
Let's hit the ground running...
The Man is keeping me down, pt. 1
WebПарк.ру: Котейки (39 фотографий)
via not enough memory
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The Man is keeping me down, pt. 2
Article: Gas to Hit $7 a Gallon
thanks, Joanne
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4. Amorphophallus: means, literally, "shapeless penis." The name comes from the shape of the erect black spadix.from Eight of the World's Most Unusual Plants (1-4) (5-8)
via Vitamin Briefcase
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Humanzee
From The Scotsman:
A LEADING scientist has warned a new species of "humanzee," created from breeding apes with humans, could become a reality unless the government acts to stop scientists experimenting.
"If you put human sperm into a frog it would probably create an embryo, but it probably wouldn't go very far," he said.
"But if you do it with a non-human primate it's not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be born alive."
RUMINT has it that humans have been "experimenting" with chimps for some time, though this has never been verified. A few beers, a lonely night, some local fauna...
Some even maintain that chimps are human.
For those of you that missed it, meet Oliver. Many thought he was a humanzee, but genetic tests showed that he was a "normal" chimp.
There's more here.
via Delicious Ghost
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Why do ghosts wear clothes?
Four nights a week, I give ghost tours.
To be honest, I have minimal interest in ghosts. I'm more into the folklore and history, but hauntings are a big part of life in Savannah. I have talked to over a hundred people in this town who have had ghost experiences. These are largely professional or salt-of-the-earth types and they're very matter-of-fact, almost bored, with it. (And let's forestall the "were they drunk?" quips. None that I know have ever seen anything of the sort while intoxicated.)
I usually don't tell people this, even on my tour, but I have seen many things here that I cannot explain. Not ambiguous maybes, but real, often 3-D, actualities. Fifteen years in New Orleans and I never had a single experience. Nearly eight years in Savannah, I've had at least two dozen. I won't go into too much detail here, but if you want to know more, contact me.
I do not believe that there is such a thing as paranormal. It's not that I don't feel that these phenomena are real, they are. I just strongly suspect that they are quite natural, normal and scientifically explainable. We merely lack the perceptual tools to measure them. Whether they are the spirits of the departed, psychic residue, time warps/loops, the product of a geomagnetic anomaly, some other type of entity or any combination of, or all of the above, the ones that are real are real and therefore, knowable. If it is merely some sort of sensory or psychological event or state, this should not dismiss anything. Even so, it warrants serious study.
But back to the matter at hand. One thing that has always puzzled me is, why do they wear clothes? This has always been a bullet point for skeptics. I'm not sure if any of the explanations in this article are sufficient, but it begs pondering. (One that I saw in a downtown cemetery was fully clothed in his authentic 19th century Sunday finest. He disappeared while I was standing about ten feet away from him. I saw another dressed in a Confederate uniform outside of the Bonaventure Cemetery. He walked behind a tree and when I went to look, he was nowhere to be found.)
via Mysterious Universe
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Hut, hut, hut, hut!
from TIME
via FFFFOUND!
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In brief:
The U.S. Civil War almost became an Iraq-style insurgency
Worry about the Daemon not Grand Theft Auto
via Danger Room
Weird Story of the Week: Con Man Reality TV
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Serve with a little...
Gotan Project - Triptico (live)
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Enjoy your week. Y'all come back now.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Shuttle Launch at Night
Decided, on a bit of a whim, to see the shuttle launch from the coast tonight (really, this morning), and, boy, I'm glad I did. Due to the low cloud cover, the launch was apparently not visible from the city, which is surprising, considering that normal night launches light up the entire Central Florida sky. However, up close, the launch was visible for a few, stunning, seconds.via pterodactyls
Watchmen - Video Journal #1 - Sets & Sensibility
Aw, yeah. I've been looking forward to this movie for many years.
With Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach!
watchmenmovie.com
Watchmen: the weblog
Watchmen YouTube page
Official Watchmen Flickr Photostream
via Dedroidify
Antarctica Condition 1 Weather
I'll keep my hot and sultry Savannah summers, thank you kindly.
Still, I'd love to go to Antarctica. Just not during Condition 1 season.
YouTube
via A Welsh View
It's a Man's Man's Man's World
Black Dog - Psil-cosyin
This tune is from Black Dog's 1995 album, Spanners, a record that I still love dearly. It stands up strong after 13 years, unlike most electronic music of that era.
I used to have this on vinyl. Every time I've had a copy of Spanners, it has managed to find a way to walk off with somebody.
A lot of DJ's would never play their music, though I used to get away with it frequently. I had some good crowds in those days. Electronic music caught on late in New Orleans, so the people who were into it, were into anything good they could find and weren't constrained by what style or how new something was. Black Dog's polyrhythmic approach and their odd, yet beautifully haunting and often dissonant melodic flow was not standard fare on most dance floors of the day. For my sets, it added a nice twist to the vibe.
Their 1992 record Bytes is excellent, as well. It features works that they created under various monikers such as, Plaid, Discordian Popes and Balil, to name a few.
Not too long after Spanners was released Ed Handley and Andy Turner left Black Dog to continue with Plaid. Though Plaid was pretty good, they never quite lived up to what they were doing during the Black Dog years. I was also not impressed with the subsequent incarnation of Black Dog, so you'd be well served to limit your search to items before 1995. In fact, you can limit it to Bytes and Spanners and you'd be getting most of the good stuff.
YouTube
TENORI-ON Product Demo Performance
From Yamaha:
Media artist Toshio Iwai and Yamaha have collaborated to design a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century, TENORI-ON.
The TENORI-ON 16 x 16 LED button matrix is simultaneously a performance input controller and display. By operating and interacting with the LED buttons and the light they produce you gain access to the TENORI-ON's numerous performance capabilities.
The TENORI-ON provides six different performance and sound/light modes for broad performance versatility, and these modes can be combined and used simultaneously for rich, complex musical expression.
This one's on the wish-list.
via grinding.be
Friday, May 2, 2008
Get your kicks on the Ring Road of Riyadh
In the absence of booze, drugs and scantily-clad women, the youth of Saudi Arabia still find their fun.
Notice how they frequently lift their feet up. That's to prevent their sandals from catching on fire.
RUMINT has it that Nike is brainstorming a new line of road-skating footwear.
from droidbad
via Cynical-C
Visualizing Povertyville and Slumtown
Puts it all into plain perspective, doesn't it?
We live in rarefied elevations here in America... and Europe... and Japan... etc. etc...
YouTube
via FlowingData
Mark's Chernobyl
ChAES: Reactor 4 Control Room
(All photos courtesy of Mark Resnicoff © 2006-2008)
If any of you read the comments on the post Elena's Chernobyl, you likely would have noticed a link posted by one MarkR.
Well, I did, and I most impressed by Mark's essay, My Journey to Chernobyl: 20 Years After the Disaster.
I was so moved, I contacted Mark and he graciously consented to our posting a few of his photos.
He has a weblog, as well. He's really into this and if you're looking for a good cause, there are few better.
Mark's account is thorough and thoughtful. You'll have a pretty good idea of what happened and what is happening in the Chernobyl area by the time you're done with it. This is the work of an historian, and though saplings grow through dead wood and hide the deserted habitations of humans and concrete towers crumble, we should never allow this story to sink into the undergrowth, forgotten.
Mark Resnicoff is doing a pretty good job of it on his own. The dude's got some serious balls, actually. I don't know if I could have done what he did.
A taste:
After the initial cleanup, Reactor 4 was covered in a cement structure known as the Sarcophagus. Due to the highly dangerous radiation levels at the site, this edifice was hastily built without following proper construction techniques and was meant to last no more than 20 years. Steel girders were placed on top of the remains of the existing building without welding them into place and cracks between cement sections were not always sealed.
Sarcophagus: ChAES
Radiation Levels - School #1: Pripyat
Rummaging in the government's attic
Welcome to governmentattic.org - "rummaging in the government's attic"
The aim of this web site is to make available materials unavailable elsewhere. There is no topic-oriented theme to our content. If we have a theme, it is one of openness, hence our motto: Videre licet.
Not quite sure who these people are, but they have an impressive library.
Right off the top, the NASA list of books, movies, television shows, and music maintained on the International Space Station (ISS) for recreational/off-duty consumption, is worth the trip.
As far as books go, the list isn't much of a surprise. Lots of science fiction. The movie list is far more interesting. I wonder if they ever watch A Charlie Brown Christmas when it isn't Christmas? Odd selection of music, too.
Other documents to be found in the government's attic include:
NORAD-USNORTHCOM 9-11 audio recordings - Over 100 hours of audio recordings of various military communications channels on September 11, 2001. Made available in multiple .mp3 files.
Three U.S. Army Reports on the Development of Gas Masks for Dogs (and Horses)
Complaints to FCC about South Park television show 2004-2007
plus some other juicy bits and a lot of boring stuff.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Back from Jax
I'm back in good ol' Savannah, energized and ready to rock.
I spent most of my time relaxing and watching movies with the occasional foray about the town. I finally got to see No Country for Old Men, which I thoroughly dug. I'm dusting off my print copy as we speak.
I didn't get to work on the new Future Tards of Jazz record as much as I'd've liked to and at this moment I sincerely hope I was not responsible for the computer problems my buddy Crow is having. The idea of this trip was to stay away from the computer as much as possible. Regardless, the new FTOJ video I was going to drop on y'all, as well as a few photos, were forestalled by this digital conundrum.
It's was surprisingly cool for this time of year, which was actually kind of nice. Especially while we were at the Double-A baseball game, courtesy of the Jacksonville Suns and the Tennessee Smokies. The Suns won 10-5. It was a good game. I can safely predict that Ivan DeJesus Jr. is going to be a big-time major league star.
Jacksonville is an interesting place. It's raison d'etre lies in the fact that it's a major transportation hub. The eastern terminus of Interstate 10 crosses the egress of I-95 from Florida into the Low-Country of Georgia. Two major train routes cross there, and they're working on major expansions of their port. The military, with Mayport Naval Station, home to the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy until it was retired a year ago, as well as 3 other bases, has a significant footprint in the area. (In fact, it has the third largest military presence in the nation.)
In a region that is heavily reliant on tourism, Jacksonville's situation is singular. It feels a bit more like south Georgia than Miami, but due to a major fire in 1901, it lacks much of an historic district. I wouldn't call it an A-list travel destination, but it would be a nice complement to a Charleston-Hilton Head-Savannah-St Augustine vacation.
Culturally, there's a growing art scene, a film festival, theatre, the Jacksonville Jazz Festival, a symphony orchestra, an opera theatre company as well as a good variety major and independent performing artists gigging at various venues around town. (If you live in Savannah and you want to see a national or international act, you generally have to go to Jax or Atlanta.)
Other attractions include, the Zoo, the Museum of Science and History, an arboretum due soon, and the Jags.
Jax factoids:
The May 3rd, 1901 fire was the largest and most destructive fire in the history of the Southeastern United States. 2,368 buildings burned, 140 city blocks were decimated, and 10,000 people were left homeless.
It is the 4th largest city by area in the U.S., largest in the lower 48. It is also the 3rd most populous city on the east coast, behind New York and Philadelphia.
Numerous circuses and traveling shows had their winter quarters in the area and many performers retired there. According to local sources, this was a noticeable part of the local flavor until about 20 or 30 years ago. I'm still looking for better sources.
In the 1910's, there were over 30 silent film studios in the area. It was known as the "Winter Film Capitol of the World"
Recently deceased physicist, John Archibald Wheeler, was born there.
Southern rock bands, The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet and .38 Special were all formed in Jack-ville...
Overall, I had a great time, but it's good to be back home.
And now, on with the show...
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